Tough Saturday for the Mercedes team as one of its drivers set the second fastest time in qualifying while the other retired at the end of Q1. Valtteri Bottas will start from P2 on the grid and Lewis Hamilton from P14 after having to stop the car due to a loss of hydraulic pressure from failed power steering.
"It’s been a tough day, but these things happen in sport. This is a part of racing," says Hamilton.
"We had a hydraulic failure at Turn 1, then lost the power steering and I went wide. When you’re fighting for a championship that’s as close as this you can’t afford days like this. You put so much preparation in, everyone works so hard, and then to go out early in Qualifying is a bit of a shock. Your heart sinks and sometimes you just can’t believe things unfold the way they do, but all you can do is suck it up. In that moment I was thinking just push the car back to the garage, maybe we can fix it - it’s that I will not to give up.
"All I can do is put aside that negative energy and see tomorrow as another opportunity to rise. Hockenheim is a trickier for overtaking on than Silverstone, but I’l l do everything I can."
Even if Ferrari showed a good form in qualifying, Mercedes thinks the cooler conditions in the race might have an impact on the competitive order.
"That was a tough qualifying session for us today – we were fighting with one hand tied behind our backs after losing Lewis’ car so early in the session. From what we can see in the data, we had an hydraulic failure as Lewis used the Turn 1 kerbs in a normal way – then, with failed power steering from the loss of hydraulic pressure, he ran wider and that’s when we saw the car bouncing dramatically on the TV," Toto Wolff added.
"Clearly, this is a vulnerability we have under the high loads you see when running the kerbs, and something we must get on top of. It will be a tall order for Lewis to come through the field tomorrow but we saw already in Silverstone how well he can fight back.
"For Valtteri, it was a mega final lap that put him on provisional pole – especially in the third sector, where he was fastest of everybody by a big margin. But Sebastian and Ferrari were just that bit stronger than us today. They were particularly strong in the middle sector and it’s clear they have found a lot of power in the last races – and that we need to catch up. It will be a challenging race tomorrow but we saw very close matched long runs from everybody in practice yesterday."
